Title: An open source approach of building web apps to support decision making with exploratory techniques. Case study: the multiple correspondence analysis on real data from agritourism

Authors: Stratos Moschidis; Athanasios C. Thanopoulos; Maro Vlachopoulou

Addresses: Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), 46 Pireos St. and Eponiton St. 185 10, Piraeus, Greece ' Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), 46 Pireos St. and Eponiton St. 185 10, Piraeus, Greece ' University of Macedonia, Egnatias str. 156, 1951 Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to present a technical path in order to formulate the creation of small customised web applications that handle big data. Such web tools could be easily integrated in knowledge-based or data driven decision support systems and provide added value. The paper studies the various ways in which relevant application can be developed and the findings resulted in a specific technical proposal. This is a combination of techniques and technologies that can be pursued to achieve more efficient and costless data analysis. To this direction, a novel demo web app was developed with open source code in which a user can login, upload data and analyse them in real-time with the multivariate exploratory method of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). The application was created under R programming language and underlines the use of shiny library. The paper contributes to the scientific facilitation of researchers and professionals with a minimum technical background in order to perform online complex data analytics tasks. Eventually, this architecture enables extensibility and customisation that suggests how decision support modules should be delivered in intelligent data systems.

Keywords: decision support systems; multicriteria analysis; R programming; multiple correspondence analysis; MCA; exploratory statistics; big data; open source software.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2018.099239

International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Management and Informatics, 2018 Vol.4 No.3/4, pp.258 - 272

Received: 14 Oct 2018
Accepted: 12 Jan 2019
Published online: 23 Apr 2019 *

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